A Day in the Life of a
Foundation Baby

They stroll into school at 9 am, one look at them, and you can spot the mischief in their eyes. They are a force to reckon with, they are the Foundation babies. As soon as they enter their classrooms they wait impatiently for their parents to leave, so that they can kick start their day with half an hour of academics. They learn the alphabet and numbers, and after this dose of studying they are completely stressed out. Phew! Soon after this its breakfast time for the babies, and they get everything ranging from pizza to chocos. Next it’s time to go to the Jhoola Badi, where you can find the future athletes of Vasant Valley School swinging from the monkey bars and instead of sliding down the slide they can be seen climbing it the wrong way. The next generation artists are busy making sand castles while the rest of them are doing anything to keep themselves occupied. As we are watching them, a little boy comes up to his teacher and says, “Ma’am do you know it is bad to use the middle finger!” we’re left standing there startled and dumbfounded.
The next lesson is dedicated to a story from Mr. Pandey or Shreemaan Pandey as he is fondly called by these babies. They hear stories ranging from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to Gholu aur Bholu. Being the creative teacher that Mr. Pandey is, he makes the children ‘enact’ (which actually means the kids standing around totally clueless) his stories.
After the exciting ‘theatre’ session, the kids head off to their favourite subject – THE PLAYROOM. Here the kids shed all inhibitions. This is where their true character comes to life. They ride around on plastic scooters, narrowly avoiding each other (but not always!), diving into the sponge bed like professionals and bombarding each other with sponges with faultless accuracy. But alas, all good things must come to an end, as the call ‘tidy up!’ rings amongst their tender ears.
Once a week, the kids get to indulge for 40 minutes in one of our school’s latest additions – The Splash Taal. Within these 40 minutes, one can experience splashing, dunking or just plain old wading. And every now and then, one wonders why the water seems a little warm.
The finale of their school day is the civilized lunch. Sitting in their places, napkins spread out and fork and spoon in hand, our ladies and gentlemen in training eat their lunch in sophistication and style. They could put the whole of senior school to shame. After this ‘tiring’ day, the Foundation Babies are reunited once again with their parents and head home, all ready for a long nap (which they so rightfully deserve). It just reminds us of the good ol’ days, and sometimes we just wish that we could relive them once again.

Mallika Sadh, Soumya Dasgupta and Jahan Nargolwala

Tree Riddles

I’m known as the umbrella tree. I’m an evergreen tree & I’m known as the village pharmacy of India. My bark, leaves, seeds, twigs & roots are used by people to protect their skin. Who am I?
Ayesha Ghai Dev 3C

I am large tree I have roots dangling down from my branches. You must have noticed sages sitting below me. I’m a common tree in India Who am I?
Indranil Roy 3C

I’m the national tree of Canada. I can live for 450 years. Every 40 years I give out syrup which is sweet and used to make things. Who am I?
Radhika 3A

Getting Fishy
Fish, fish in the sea,
Come and play with me
We will have lots of fun
As in this game
We have to run.
Aakanksha Sahib III C

A Brave Lady

My grand–aunt was a freedom fighter. Although she was only in college, she had joined the freedom movement and was working with Aruna Asaf Ali. One day when she was giving out some information on the Quit India Movement, she was arrested by the British police and taken to jail. My Grand-aunt used to tell me that in jail she was made to stay with all sorts of criminals. In the next cell there was a woman who had murdered her husband. It was very scary for my grand-aunt who was only a young girl. However, Rup Seth (my grand-aunt) remained brave and undaunted. She made a plan with her friend (who was also in jail with her) to hoist the Indian flag inside the jail. My grand-aunt and her friend carried out this plan even though they knew that they would be caught and punished. The next morning there was great excitement in the jail when the prisoners woke up to see the Indian flag flying high instead of the British flag. My grand-aunt and her friend confessed their crime to the jailers and they were sent off to solitary confinement for fifteen days. It was a very tough punishment but my grand-aunt accepted it. Many years later after India won Independence; my grand-aunt was honored by the President of India. But, for my grand-aunt the real prize was the freedom of our country.

Ananya Bhandari

Man Vs. God: Who Created Whom?

Strolling lazily along the seashore one evening, you stumble upon a watch lying on the sand. As you walk past the monotonous piece of machinery, you may ponder over who might have created it- surely, someone must have. Realizing the futility of the subject, however, you casually assign this creator his anonymous name, a watchmaker, and continue to saunter along the invitingly peaceful shoreline.
Now, if a lifeless mechanical device as simple and unexciting as a watch can have a creator, then surely, an entity as intricate and multifaceted as a human being must also possess a conscious maker. A maker with divine aesthetic sense and infallible craftsmanship who brought to life an unending and perfectly coordinated universe. And isn’t the only being who could possibly possess such virtues God?
Not quite. The watch mentioned earlier serves a specific purpose- to tell the time. We as human beings serve no such purpose. We simply exist. And as far as the inexplicable beauty of the universe is concerned, it cannot be inferred from the fact that the universe was created that God was its creator, and just because it is beautiful and varied doesn’t mean it was consciously designed. Can’t beauty happen by accident? Of course it can, and here’s how.
God has been long known to perform miracles. He has also been believed to know with infallible certainty the future. But what about his freedom? For God to be free in action there must be the possibility for a change of mind. This means that God himself cannot perfectly know his own future. Only such a god can intervene in the course of human events and perform a miracle. Yet for a miracle to be a free act, it cannot be known in advance. And if this god changes its mind, then we cannot say that it really did know in advance what would happen, much less know it perfectly. A perfect case of self-contradiction.
Another loophole in God’s existence is the chain of cause and effect. Everything in the universe has a cause. Only God exists as the uncaused first cause. But this cosmological argument doesn’t account for anything. Firstly, an uncaused first cause doesn’t necessarily have all the attributes it would need to be called ‘God’. More importantly, however, this ‘uncaused first cause’ is just as incomprehensible to us as an endless chain of cause and effect. It just shifts the incomprehension one stage back.
If God does indeed exist as a perfect being, bereft of want or desire, then why did he create the universe in the first place? It would be outside the realm of perfection to experiment with even the slightest temptation- be it curiosity alone.
Arnav Sharma

Black and White

Sacred emotions
Black and white
Arousing desire
Blinding light
He walks in his rickety solitude
A stick to support
Only memories to live for
While walking to his death
A lifetime of experience passed on.
He wants to live his youth again
All the joy and pain
He wants to learn to walk again.
And yet he knows he can’t.
Someone has to take his place
The little child, born out of his light
That innocent face
Killing the desire in him
But could he challenge God?
Take devil’s place
Become immortal..??
Could he be an individual case?
Something in him is shouting
“Stop this nuisance
Death can’t be braced”
A lonely silence left
Trying too hard not to cry
He’s been taken away
Away from his wife
Away from his children
Love has never known any logic
But the head begs to differ
He wants to kill someone
And take his place
He wants to live some more
Just one more second.
They say age makes you wise
Yet wisdom stands in his way
Death so black
Life so white
He wants to go back there
Make those mistakes just one more time
Fall in love
Skin his knee
Kiss the rain one more time
Contradicting emotions
Has he the right to ask for more?
Seventy years of fulfillment
Dare he want more?
Upsetting undercurrents
Shaking his mortality
Holding his hand
Death pulling him in too fast
Time slipping by
Tears wetting the sign of life
Panic surrounds him
Those soundless dreams
Scattering
He’s losing his life.
A void is all that stays
He’s going away
Black dark, white waiting,
To be unveiled
A life destroyed
Or God’s design?
The black fades
With the rhythm as his last breath
He daren’t ask for more
He knows he’ll be back again
Black—less dream
White—less memory
Zoya Brar

Our Experience at the Sri Dasmesh Academy

After an eight hour journey from New Delhi, the sight of the beautiful never ending campus of The Sri Dasmesh Academy lifted our spirits. The campus sprawls across 200 acres and has abundant greenery. The people were hospitable, helpful and friendly from the start and it didn’t take long for us to settle down.
We were impressed by the open yet simple architecture of the school building which added to the serenity of the environment.
The purpose of our visit was to attend a first aid programme conducted by a few Israeli medical cadets. This workshop enriched us in different fields of medicine and science for application in our daily lives. During this training module we learnt about first aid, resuscitation, head injuries, chest injuries, injuries from animals, fractures and bleeding.
Besides learning first aid we also interacted with the Israeli students. We learned about their culture, lifestyle, geographical features of their country and language and tried our best to tell them about our rich and diverse cultural heritage. We enjoyed dancing, singing and taking memorable photographs with them.
We are extremely grateful to the staff and students of the academy for their outstanding hospitality. No matter the time or situation, we could always count on them.
The performance by the students of this academy was commendable and reminded us of our unique heritage. We learnt a number of interesting things about the diversity of our country. The end result showed the huge amount of effort that was put into each performance by the faculty and the students.
Not only was this trip educational and culturally stimulating, it was also fun and enjoyable. We will definitely cherish these memories and keep them close to our hearts.
Shivani Agrawal, Sakhshi Mahajan, Arshia Arora, Jaagriti Seth and
Natasha Uppal.

Living On A Landfill

On the 13th of August, a group of Class 12 students were taken to Ghazipur to look at one of Delhi’s landfills.
The Ghazipur Landfill is a 70 acre landfill that was dug 5 metres into the ground. Today, however, it is almost 30 metres high, and is quite literally a mountain of garbage.
I thought that it was an exaggeration when I heard that all the garbage of Delhi ended up in the landfill, but when I got there, I realized it wasn’t: anything and everything that can be thrown into a dustbin lands up at the landfill. The contents of the landfill range from soil, to rotting fruit, to plastic chips packets, to clothes, and even to dead animals. Occasionally, there were pools of green, mucky coloured liquid that were bubbling as if they were alive, and with every step that I took, I could feel my feet sinking a few centimetres into the garbage that lay beneath them.
The most saddening, and worrying experience was talking to the rag-pickers. It is the job of a rag-picker to pick up any sort of garbage (that looks useable) from the landfill. They sell the junk to local dealers, and generally get a daily income of around Rs. 70. Most of them work in thin rubber chappals, and thin shorts that reach their knees, and rest by sitting on random rubbish from the landfill.
Perhaps the most horrible part of the situation was the feeling of helplessness that I got when we were talking to the rag-pickers. They live in the most filth and inhumane conditions imaginable, and they make their living by picking up things that they can find from Delhi’s dustbins. They did were not supplied with any sort of masks (like we were), and they pick away at the filth, unconcerned by the medical implications of doing so.
When we came away from the landfill, we knew that there was really nothing that we could do to help these people, as our pleas will fall on the deaf ears of an unconcerned government. We did, however, learn a lot from the trip, and will make sure that it was not wasted on us.
Simrat Dugal